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Investigators have ruled the fire that killed a Waterford-area man on Thanksgiving Day was accidental.

On Friday, Matt Mullins, spokesman for the Ohio State Fire Marshal's Office, said it appeared the fire started while Tom Birch, 77, was trying to cut the rear bumper off a pull-behind camper.

"It looks like it caught the camper on fire and then it spread to the barn itself," he said.

Mullins did not say what type of tool Birch had been using but that apparently was the source.

Tom Birch's son, Randy, said his father had recently purchased the used camper with the intention of refurbishing it, then moving the trailer onto a 16-acre tract of property the elder Birch owned in Meigs County.

On Friday, Tom Birch's wife, Joyce, described what happened Thursday after she and her husband had spent a couple of hours visiting with family members around 6 p.m.

"After the visit, he said he was going out to the building and wouldn't be too long," Joyce Birch said. "The next thing I heard was Tom calling through the side door of the house, 'Call 911, the trailer's on fire.' I thought he meant our double-wide home was on fire."

She phoned the 911 dispatcher, gave her name and address at 171 Sand Ridge Road, and told him the house was on fire.

"But when I came outside I saw it was the (barn)," Joyce Birch said. "Tom was not anywhere around, and I was afraid he had gone back inside the building."

Neighbor Chuck Ellis, who lives just up the road from the Birches said a breeze was blowing smoke from the fire toward his house.

"We were eating dinner when my wife said she smelled smoke," Ellis said. "My son and I went outside, and the smoke was so thick we thought our house was on fire. We weren't sure where it was coming from."

Driving down the road Ellis said he could see the source of the smoke was the Birches' metal barn.

"We knocked on the door of their house and told Joyce she'd better tell Tom to come out because the building was on fire," Ellis said. "We didn't know she had already called 911."

Ellis and his son searched the property, including other outbuildings, but there was no sign of Tom Birch.

"There were no lights on inside the building, and the man door on the side and the two large sliding front doors were closed," Ellis said. "Then it occurred to me that the electricity might have been cut off by the fire."

He said there were banging noises coming from inside the barn as well as a few small explosions, possibly caused by bursting aerosol cans.

"I told my son I didn't want to do it, but I had to open the main door on the side to try and get Tom out," Ellis said. "The smoke was so thick just inside the door that you couldn't even see the floor. I had just taken a couple of steps back when flames came out of the door."

They tried to open the large sliding garage doors on the front side of the building, but both were latched from inside.

Within minutes, firefighters from the Beverly Volunteer Fire Department arrived and cut holes into the side of the building to gain access to the latches in order to open the sliding doors.

Rescuers found Tom Birch lying inside with a ladder on top of him. He was rushed to Marietta Memorial Hospital and later pronounced dead.

Tom's nephew, Gale Lipps, helped Randy Birch isolate the barn's electrical service from the house on Friday.

"The camper was a total loss, and there was a lot of smoke damage to two tractors and a dozer he had stored inside. The steering wheels and lights were melted, but the tractors still started," Lipps said.

He said Tom Birch wasn't one to stay idle.

"He did everything, and I helped him out quite a bit when he asked," Lipps added.

Ellis has lived on Sand Ridge Road for 30 years, and said Tom and Joyce Birch had lived next door for about 15 years.

"They're the best neighbors we've ever had - they're just real good people," he said.

Joyce Birch said funeral services for her husband have been scheduled at 10 a.m. Monday at St. Bernard Catholic Church in Beverly.

Evan Bevins contributed.